Man Sues American Airlines for Losing Wife’s Dead Body
Everyone’s dealt with lost or misplaced luggage on an airplane before. But few have had the lost luggage experience of Miguel Olaya, a 60-year-old Brooklynite.
Olaya was transporting a coffin with the body of his deceased wife Teresa via an American Airlines flight to Guayaquil, in their native country of Ecuador. However, when he arrived, her body didn’t. Oyala had to wait four days until American delivered the body, which by then was in such a state of decomposition that his family could no longer hold an open-casket funeral. American had evidently not properly refrigerated the body as guaranteed by their stated policy on transportation of bodies.
Oyala and his 16-year-old daughter have now filed a lawsuit against American Airlines, seeking an undisclosed sum that reportedly reaches into the millions.
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